Insightful Finances

We provide actionable insights to life's what-iFs to help millennials break away from the 78% of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck. Rather than focusing on the rear view like traditional budgeting tools, we help users create a financial plan through what-iF scenarios (what iF I bought a new house vs iF I rented, for example)

We recently finished a startup accelerator program through Unstuck Labs. They helped us take our idea and transform it into an executable startup. We then released a bare-bones beta version (insightfulfinances.com/beta) on which we have received over 100 sign ups with no marketing spend. Our primary revenue stream will come from referring users to realtors, so we have connected with over 30 real estate agents in Atlanta and received letters of interest from them. The letter of interest states that they would be willing to pay 25% of their commission for referrals. We have also just completed a thorough Scope of Work (SOW) with the development group ChopDawg. This 176 SOW details how our app will look and function when we raise development funds.

We are targeting employed people between 25 and 44. This demographic is confident in online security (92% currently use online banking tools), has income (thus a need for creating a financial plan), and have no real means for creating financial plans (not enough current net worth to attract professional help).

Our revenue stream requires us to have actual connections with realtors, so we must be strategic in where we market. Because we are targeting the millennial demographic, it makes sense to market to areas with higher populations of millennials. In our pitch deck we highlight in green the states with highest populations of millennials. Atlanta GA is where we are headquartered and has a large population of millennials (1.1MM) so this will be our launch market.

78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, largely because understanding personal finances is difficult. It takes over 15 variables to model a buying a house vs renting scenario, yet only 1/3 adults understand more than 3 financial literacy topics. Financial experts (money managers) aren’t incentivized to help because of the relatively low net worth of millennials. This create a huge gap that millennials fill through excel spreadsheets (cumbersome even for nerdy engineers like us) or by taking leaps of faith.

We help millennials fill this gap and achieve peace of mind in their finances by providing a way for them to evaluate what-iFs that are meaningful to them. Through a simple 5 minute questionnaire a user can create a baseline (where they are at today) and get actionable insights on how to improve their finances and achieve their stated goals (retiring early, buying a house, etc). We also allow for users to create their own “what-iFs” and track their progress over time.

There are many traditional budgeting tools like Mint, Digit, and YNAB. These tools however only focus on the rear view – on what has already happened. Personal Capital is more forward looking, though it focuses on your current trajectory rather than scenario planning.

Our hard-working team is our primary advantage. We are uniquely positioned to execute this startup because of our immense project management experience. Between the four of us, we have experience in managing schedule, cost and contract execution for projects over $100 MM; experience creating and managing the process for evaluating strategic decisions worth over $100 MM; and experience managing a team of developers for projects for the Department of Defense.

iF receives revenue through referral fees. For example, when a user specifies that owning a home is a goal, she will be prompted with what-iF scenarios that show the impacts of her owning a home. To help her take her goals to fruition, we connect her with real estate agents in her area that can help her purchase the right home. When she purchases a home, we receive 25% of the realtor’s commission.

We have one-time development cost which we have estimated at 250k. This estimate comes from working for several weeks with a development group, ChopDawg, and developing a 176 project SOW.

Our business model uses an average financial app customer acquisition cost of $3.52 which was also vetted by a professional marketing group, Moburst. Customers will be primarily acquired through online media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google Display Ads.

Our business model is based on connecting users with service providers that can help them achieve their goals. Because we a dependent on obtaining users and these users taking action within our app, our two most important metrics are user acquisition cost and user conversion rate.

250k on development
100k on server and app maintenance in the first year
24k on Moburst Marketing partnership
376k on Marketing (primarily through online media)

We are seeking a total of 750k at a 5MM valuation

We are an early stage startup. The majority of our financials are based on market research, not historical results. All early stage startups have enormous risk, however, risk mitigation and project execution is our specialty.

Participation in the startup accelerator Unstuck Labs